why they were rarely seen in public together, why she'd yet to bear him a child-every possible answer lead- ing only to further questions, further humiliations. It was worse than the first winter of their marriage, when he had brought her with him to church on Christmas, and the entire congregation had whispered afterward, "What does he mean by bringing her here?" Worse even than the following Christmas, when he had not, and they said, 'What does he mean by leaving her at home?" And now they were talking about the smokehouse. In the two days since the tiger was spotted in the village, there were whispers everywhere. 'What had she been doing," they were asking on street corners, "in the smokehouse with that tiger? And what did it mean," they wanted to know, "that Luka couldn't keep her in his bed?" For weeks, he had suspected that the smokehouse was missing meat, but he had second-guessed his own judgment, refusing to believe that she had the au- dacity to steal from him. And then he had seen the tiger, and the sight of that pork in the big cat's jaws had stunned him-that litde Gypsy, he had thought, that emasculating Muhammadan bitch, sneaking out and giving his meat to the Devil. She was making him look like an idiot. Hitting her had never helped before, but it made him feel that he was doing something, interrupting her thoughts, at the very least, if he could do nothing to interrupt the town's. In a way, her silence had always terrified him. She was like an animal, he thought, as silent and be- grudging as an owl. The injustice of it: that judgment that he knew was there but couldn't make her voice or put away, reinforced now to such an extent that she spent her nights away from him and stole from him, and the whole village had seen it. Theywere saying what she couldn't- or at least that's what he thought-and so he beat her. With his hands, his feet, his belt, he beat her. The night he returned from the hunt, he took her outside and tied her up in the smokehouse. He told himself that he wanted only to punish her, but while he was eating his supper and get- ting ready for bed he understood that some part of him was hoping that the tiger would come for her, that it would come in the night and rip her apart, and in the morning he would awake to find nothing. VII. THE WIFE I f you go to Galina now, people will tell you different things about Lukà s dis- appearance, but, of course, no one will ever tell you that days went by before any- one began to suspect a thing. People didn't like Luka-they didn't visit his house, and his eerie docility as he stood in the shop, covered in blood with his hands on the meat, made them universally un- comfortable. The truth is that even after the baker's daughter went to buy meat, and found the shutters of the butcher's shop closed and the lights out, it took sev- eral days before anyone tried again. At the time, most people assumed that Luka had simply left, that he had given up on the village and decided to brave the snowed-in pass and make for the city while the German occupation there was still new. In fact, the whole situation did not strike anyone as particularly unusual until the deaf-mute girl appeared in town two weeks later, with a fresher, brighter, slightly fuller face and that smile which suggested something new about her. My grandfather had just returned from the timber pile and was pounding the snow from the bottoms of his shoes, when he saw the deaf-mute girl coming down the road, wrapped in Lukàs fur coat. It was a cloudless winter afternoon, and vil- lagers were leaning against their door- ways. At first, only a few of them saw her, but by the time she reached the square the whole village was watching her as she made her way into the fabric shop. A few minutes later, my grandfather saw her cross the square with a parcel of Turkish silks under her arm, followed by a small procession of village women, who, while keeping their distance, were too intrigued to maintain the illusion of nonchalance. It wasn't long before theywere talking o about her, and my grandfather was lis- tening. They were talking about her on everyvillage corner, on everyvillage door- step, and he could hear them as he came and went from Mother Verà shouse. Truths and half-truths drifted like shad- ows into conversations he was not in- tended to overhear. At the greengrocer's, in line for pick- ling salts: "I seen the deaf-mute today." "The Muhammadan?" "I seen her coming down from that house again, alone as you please." 'Where was Luka? Shè s driven him away, hasn't she?" "Of course not. Isn't it plain? That ti- ger's got him. That tiger's got him, and now she's all alone, nobody bothering her, no one but the tiger." Then, two days later, at the well: "You hear? That tiger got Luka in the smokehouse." "Sure he did. All strung up, ready for h o " 1m. " H d ",\" ow 0 you mean!' 'Well, you don't think it was an acci- dent, do you? That Luka, he never was none too clever. Still, that's what comes to you when you marry one of them Mu- hammadans from God knows where. Like a Gypsy, that girl. Probably strung him up with his own meat hooks, left him there for the tiger." " Th ' b " at can t e true. 'Well, you believe it or don't. But I'm telling you, whatever happened to that Luka was no accident. And that baby- that's no accident, neither." 'What baby?" "Haven't you seen her? Haven't you seen her coming into town? That girfs got a belly out to here, are you blind?" "Therè s no belly." "Oh, therè s a belly-and I'll tell you something else. That belly ain't Lukà s." At the timber pile: "I heard she carved him up, right in his own smokehouse, and then in comes the tiger for dinner, and she feeds him strips of her dead husband like it's feast day." At church, holding Mother Vera's hand: "That tiger. I seen him crossing the pasture by moonlight, big as a horse. Wild eyes in that tiger's head, I'm telling you. Froze me right down to my feet." 'What were you doing out so late?" "That doesn't matter. Point is, that THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 &amp; 15, 2009 53